Host SantEgidio community in familiar
mediator role
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
Though a product of the same late 1960s radicalism that gave birth
to the yippies and flower power, Romes Community of
SantEgidio is today anything but a faded icon of another era. Instead, it
is regarded as one of the most effective nongovernmental bodies in the world in
the quest for peace, justice and interreligious tolerance.
The difference may be that while other student radicals drew
inspiration from Che Gueverra or Mao, the founders of SantEgidio looked
to the gospels and the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
Launched in 1968 by an Italian high school student named Andrea
Riccardi, SantEgidio (St. Giles in English) takes its name
from an old Carmelite convent in Romes Trastevere district where early
members gathered for worship. The idea was to develop a common spirituality and
to apply it in service to the poor of Rome.
The group began by living and working among the forgotten
people along the citys periphery, living John XXIIIs motto
that the Catholic church is for everyone, especially the poor.
Members founded so-called popular schools in order to boost
educational opportunities for disadvantaged children.
Early on, a custom developed of gathering for prayer at the end of
the day. Today the community offers a public vespers service every night at
8:30 in the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Overflow crowds of young
Romans and pilgrims come, drawn both by the beautiful music and by the clear
connection SantEgidio seems to make between liturgy and life.
The community runs the best-appointed soup kitchen in Rome, where
1,500 diners a day are treated like guests at an elegant trattoria,
seated at tables and served a full-course meal from a menu. SantEgidio
members also minister to the elderly, to the handicapped and to persons with
AIDS.
During the 1980s, as SantEgidio began to expand
internationally (today it has some 30,000 members in 35 countries), members
found themselves wanting to do more than compensate for the effects of poverty.
They wanted to attack the problem at its roots, and that meant working to end
war. A breakthrough success came on Oct. 4, 1992, when they brokered a peace
accord in Mozambique, ending a brutal civil war that had left more than 1
million people dead over almost two decades.
The former secretary general of the United Nations, Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, coined the phrase the Rome formula in reference to
the communitys careful, painstaking approach.
SantEgidio also played a role in negotiating an end to the
civil war in Guatemala with a Dec. 29, 1996, peace accord that paved the way
for a truth commission to document the horrors in that nation over the
preceding 25 years.
These efforts have drawn much praise, but some observers say the
communitys ability at self-promotion has run ahead of its success on the
ground. Many of its other efforts to bring peace -- in Algeria, Kosovo and
Burundi -- failed, and even in Mozambique rebel forces have not fully
demobilized. According to the United Nations, the country is still a major
crossroads in the global small arms market.
Nevertheless, SantEgidio is widely sought after as a
mediator in conflict situations. Riccardi has won the UNESCO Gandhi Medal, and
the community has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
This commitment to peace also led SantEgidio into a
commitment to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. In 1986, John Paul invited
leaders of the worlds major religions to join him in Assisi to pray for
peace. That session generated sharp criticism from the right, which worried
about blurring Catholicisms distinctiveness. SantEgidio, however,
picked up the spirit of Assisi and has sponsored annual
interreligious gatherings ever since.
SantEgidio is considered one of the so-called new
movements that have sprung up in the Catholic church following Vatican
II, and it is not without detractors. Some critics see a cult of personality
around Riccardi, today a professor of contemporary history at Romes
Sapienza University. Others suggest SantEgidio has forged close ties with
the Vatican and the Italian hierarchy at the cost of its independence.
Some commentators charge, for example, that Riccardi has become a
favorite in the halls of power in part by allowing Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the
popes vicar of Rome, to bask in the reflected glory of the community.
That John Paul II favors SantEgidio is clear. Riccardi is
frequently invited to speak at Vatican events, and last March the pope made
Vincenzo Paglia, one of the communitys few priest-members, a bishop.
Before the appointment, Paglia was the official responsible for the cause of
declaring the late Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint.
Members of the community, however, say they are not interested in
ecclesiastical preferment.
We are men and women together, children of both 68 and
Vatican II, who want to live the whole gospel without addition, as laity,
said Mario Marazziti, a spokesperson for SantEgidio. He sat down with
NCR after evening prayer at Santa Maria in Trastevere Sept. 20.
The aim is to change ones own life, and through so
doing to change the world, Marazziti said, without relying on
power.
Paulist Fr. Paul Robichaud, pastor of the American parish in Rome
at Santa Susanna, told NCR that SantEgidios diplomatic
success has given the community an unusual degree of clout for a lay movement.
There arent many groups in Rome with a direct pipeline to the
[Vaticans] Secretariat of State, he said.
Robichaud praised the communitys outreach to young Romans.
They make church a place they want to come, he said.
Theyve created a thriving ministry in the center of the city, and
thats not easy to do.
There are two SantEgidio affiliates in the United States,
one in New York and the other in Boston.
National Catholic Reporter, October 6,
2000
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